The Ethics Of Banning A Brutal Beheading Video

“I think ten years ago, most news organizations would have opted to not show the video,” Jillian York, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Berlin-based director for international freedom of expression, told ThinkProgress.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has exceptions, and allows violent content for information that is educational or documentary purpose, said York, who focuses on free expression and privacy in the Middle East.

“All of these platforms have rules that ban violent content. Personally, I don’t have an issue with them taking the video down. But there is a problem with consistency.”

One of the most pernicious forms of censorship in modern America is the abuse of the court system by corporations and wealthy individuals to harass, intimidate, and silence their critics. We use the term “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” more commonly known as a “SLAPP,” to describe this phenomenon. With...

SESTA and FOSTA Could Hide Trafficking from Law Enforcement In the most illuminating part of last week’s House subcommittee hearing on the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), Tennessee Bureau of Investigation special agent Russ Winkler explained how he uses online...

We’ve taken a stand for the First Amendment rights of individuals to receive and comment on social media posts from governmental officials and agencies. We’ve received a lot of good questions about why we believe that public servants—mayors, sheriffs, senators, even President Donald Trump—can’t block people whose views...

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Homeland Security today, demanding records about the agencies’ work on the federal Tattoo Recognition Technology program. This secretive program involves a coalition of government, academia, and...

SESTA and FOSTA Are Cut from the Same Cloth. Both Would Be Disastrous for Online Communities There are two bills racing through Congress that would undermine your right to free expression online and threaten the online communities that we all rely on. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, ...

EFF is taking the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), FBI, and DHS to court to obtain records about a program to refine automated tattoo recognition technology. Beginning in 2014, NIST, with support from the FBI and DHS, created a multi-part technology challenge that encouraged public universities and private...

As Congress and the Federal Elections Commission explore ways to counter foreign influence in U.S. elections through greater campaign finance disclosures, EFF has filed comments reminding policy makers of the danger of going too far. While the FEC’s goals are understandable, it must take care not to undermine...

The First Amendment is too often overlooked in discussions of the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance authorities. But as Congress considers whether to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA this winter, we must remember that it’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy that are in the crosshairs, but...

A federal judge has ruled that EFF need not obey an Australian injunction ordering EFF to take down a “Stupid Patent of the Month” blog post and never speak of the patent owner’s intellectual property again. It all started when Global Equity Management (SA) Pty Ltd (GEMSA)’s ...